


This Is The Way That Legends Begin

by Leonawriter



Series: Imperial Remnants [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everybody Lives, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-13 21:43:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5718169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leonawriter/pseuds/Leonawriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of how Darth Vader is able to take over the role of Emperor, and no one questions a thing. Accidents do happen, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is The Way That Legends Begin

Later on, through word of mouth and historical accounts that had been passed on from those who had been there to those who hadn't, stories that became legends that became myth, it was nothing short of a miracle.

Teachers would tell in classrooms a lesson that would have children of all ages rapt with attention at tales of heroism and villainy and redemption. Holovids would play up the drama, and gloss over anything deemed not fit for young eyes, or that didn't fit with the agenda of the day.

If you were to ask Luke himself, however, he would only smile, and - if you were lucky to get an actual answer - tell you that none of that was true.  _Based_ on the truth, maybe. And perhaps they had let it be that way. 

No, he would say, it wasn't a miracle, not by a long shot.

People don't usually like to know that their so-called heroes can be  _fallible_.

...

Luke caught a vision of himself in Vader's helmet, and time slowed down as the Force went over its options.

It had a few. The Force was, as an omnipresent, non-dying entity, generally the kind of thing to not mind much which way things went. The light side might prefer it if things went  _this_ way, and the dark might throw at tantrum if they didn't go  _that_ way, but all in all, things were what they were. It didn't usually have  _options_ , though.

In this case, Luke could keep on attacking his father, or something else could happen.

If the Force were a person - or a group of people - it would have been muttering excitedly to itself. 

 _Always in motion, the future is,_ the light side remembered one of its own saying often. Generally, though, there weren't that many surprises. Meanderings, yes, where things went off course for a while and then they meandered back. But not, usually, the kind of thing where  _options_ happened.

Luke saw his reflection in his father's helmet, and he remembered his own face looking back at him, a decapitated Vader that he had defeated that had given him no satisfaction at the time, and gave no satisfaction now.

 _I'm afraid,_ he found himself thinking, backing away. The decision was made, and the Force held its breath, watched, listened.  _But I'm not that afraid. I won't let him turn her, I can't. But - I won't let myself become him, either._

He looks at where his lightsaber is. Where it had been going. He can feel Vader's eyes looking in the same direction as his own, through their bond, even strained as it was by the shields that he kept up to hide just  _who_ his sister was. If there was anything left to hide.

His eyes drift closed, just for a moment, and perhaps that's an unwise move with both Vader and the Emperor in the room but he trusts in the Force and it's all a moot point anyway. 

He powers down his lightsaber. The blade thrums out of existence, and now he's just Luke again.

He knows what he was about to do. Perhaps it would have been just a hand, this time. Perhaps it would have been more. But that isn't him, and even if it was, he doesn't  _want_ it to be.

He throws his 'saber down. Not too far away - he wants to be able to get it back afterwards,  _if_ there is an afterwards, if his father or the Emperor don't kill him first.

"You've failed, your highness," he says to the Emperor. "I won't turn. I am a Jedi," and the words come out with a sense of finality that puts him at ease, "like my father before me."

...

 _You see,_ Luke would say,  _it wasn't a miracle._

_It was seeing the worst of me looking back from the man who I was trying to save. I knew there was still light in him. I wouldn't have gone to him if there wasn't._

_But it was easy to forget and ignore my own darkness. Sometimes we get so carried away with our feelings that we don't even realise we're becoming what we'd been trying to fight in the first place._

_I didn't stop because of Vader suddenly having a change of heart. I didn't stop because I suddenly saw that I was winning and I didn't need to keep going anymore._

_I stopped because I saw myself, and right then... I saw that I was just as full of hate as either of the others in the room._

_I hated myself._

_I couldn't see how I was any better in that moment than the man I was besting._

_..._

And then there was lightning and anger and pain and helplessness and  _fear_ , because nothing could have prepared him for this. No one had  _warned_ him about this. He had fancied himself a Jedi, and now he wondered if the Jedi had ever faced something like this-

If the Jedi had screamed,

or begged

or pleaded

for it all to end

for someone to make it stop 

and he found himself thinking -

in the spare seconds when he wasn't grasping for a hope that was like a single lamp that was slowly guttering out

\- if perhaps his friends and sister down on Endor had been able to cut off the shields, and if they'd done that then Lando and the others would be doing their run on the Death Star's weak points.

If no one saved him, then they would all be dead soon anyway, if that happened.

( _At least we're going to all die together_ , he thought, and wondered which braincells had been fried to bring up that idea and think it was a good one.

He didn't want to die, after all.)

 _"Father_..."

Lightning danced across his eyes, and the last thing he saw was black across his field of vision.

...

To say that in that moment, Darth Vader became Anakin Skywalker again would not be completely accurate. For one thing, it had always been  _other people_ who saw them as two entirely different individuals - the man himself had never seen a difference.

Darth Vader was Anakin Skywalker, and anything that belonged to Anakin Skywalker also, therefore, belonged to Darth Vader. It was as simple as that.

His droids. His old lightsaber. His old master. They were all his just as anything was.

His  _son_. 

His, not Palpatine's, not anyone els's.  _His_.

And now, his  _daughter_ , too. Also taken from him, he felt, stolen away when he should have seen them both grow up. He felt the loss acutely, the sure knowledge that  _his daughter_ had grown up calling  _someone else_ 'mother' and  _someone else_ 'father'.

His children. His own.

And now, there was something more that they both shared.

The  _pain_. 

The suit wasn't meant to dull pain. It was meant to defend him, yes, but then again it did double as armour as well as a life support unit. But pain? No, pain was useful. It told you when you were injured, and gave you reason to be angry, reason to be afraid, and reason to  _hate_ whoever had caused such pain.

Darth Vader was currently afraid for his son - for his daughter, as well, because if she was his then she had to _live,_ and she couldn't do that if this monstrosity fired on that planet - and he was angry that he had merely been watching and helpless and now, oh -  _now_ he felt  _hatred_.

Whole, the suit protected against electrical short-outs. There were failsafes upon failsafes, after all. It wouldn't do to have the Emperor's fist struck down by an accidental knock or an angry droid... or his angry master after a mission gone sour. 

Palpatine would have wanted to inflict more pain on him at a later date, and that couldn't be done if he wasn't alive to be punished.

Vader let the Force flow through him, and found that once he started, it was quite easy.

All he needed to do was carry a dead weight and step one foot in front of the other. And again. And again.

" _I am your master!"_ Palpatine was screaming, and for the first time, he saw it as what it was - pitiful.

Because this time, not even Force lightning could help the hateful old man.

"Darth Vader's master, but not  _Anakin Skywalker's!"_

And then, let go.

The scream carried on. As did the crackle of static, leftover energy that hadn't yet faded.

Pain spiked, and his breath rasped, the respirator struggling to do what what was necessary, but still holding strong. He would need the suit looked at, fixed. But that would have to be done later, if that was possible.

...

When Luke drifted into awareness once more, the fire had all but died out, leaving mainly a mass of aches and pains as though he'd run a marathon on Dagobah. He could feel something hard against his face, and underneath him, and a weightless feeling of being carried.

He opened his eyes and immediately regretted his decision. Nausea threatened to overwhelm him, and he only just managed to win the battle against it.

The sound of alarms could still be heard, at once close and far away. But he had the distinct impression that he was moving away from them, and he didn't mind one bit.

For some reason Luke couldn't quite put his finger on, he felt  _safe._

His eyes started to drift shut again, and the rhythm of the steady pace lulled him to sleep, and it was only when he felt the brush of a familiar mind against his own that he remembered why it would be a good idea to wake up, and stay awake.

Still. It was hard. 

"Father...?"

The black glove that was passing across his line of sight paused, before continuing to push buttons. His father was in the pilot's seat of a ship, and Luke himself was sat, almost lying down, a little further back in the shuttle.

 _You had best ensure that you are secure, Luke,_ he felt his father say as the shuttle powered up and started to move.  _Thanks to your friends' efforts, this may not be the smoothest ride._

Luke blinked at the humour, bleak though it was, and didn't question the suggestion. Seconds later, his father's prediction came true, and they were careening through the interior of the Death Star, only just making it through in front of the fireball, not always missing struts and structures before they clipped the shuttle's exterior and shields.

For the first time, Luke was able to watch his father pilot a craft, and see first hand what old Ben had meant when he'd said that Luke's father had been the greatest star pilot in the galaxy.

If he was honest, he still wasn't sure what was happening. It had all gone by so quickly, from one thing to the next. He didn't even know if he was still expected to turn to the Dark side at some point, even though he could  _feel_ the Emperor's absence in the Force, and he didn't truly know if his father was on his side.

They emerged into a battlefield, and Luke's first thought, regardless of how much they had achieved and how many lives they had saved through its destruction, was of how much life had been  _lost_. How many men. How many friends.

He hadn't been able to feel it, the first time. He hadn't been trained enough to. This time, it made him guiltily relieved that he wasn't the one piloting.

His distraction lead him to not notice when the shuttle's comms went online.

_"Shuttle Hyperium, this is the Executor, state your-"_

"Executor, this is Darth Vader. Stand down. I repeat - stand down."

There was a pause. Luke could only imagine that the crew of the Super Star Destroyer were just as shocked as he was to hear those words.

 _"Lord Vader-!_ _"_ And possibly, just as shocked to know that his father had made it out of there  _alive_.  _"But the_ _rebels-"_

"I believe I made myself clear."

 _"The Emperor's orders-_ "

"The Emperor is  _dead_." And it wasn't just Luke's imagination telling him that there was a definite note of morbid accomplishment in those words. "He died with the Death Star. You now all answer to me and me alone."

There was a moment's pause, and he could feel the man's shock through the Force.

_"Yes, sir. Understood."_

The Imperial hadn't been the only one blindsided.

"Father?" Luke's voice was deceptively calm. For the moment, anyway. "Did you just-?!"

"I did what I had to do in order to ensure there wouldn't be  _chaos_ as soon as the first Imperial agents understood what Palpatine's presence on the Death Star must mean!" Vader snapped out, distracted. 

"You just  _declared yourself Emperor_."

Vader spent a moment as they continued to dodge around the rebel fighters and assorted ships to tilt his helmet in Luke's direction, and  _that_ was the moment when he realised that his father hadn't, actually, thought it through.

Luke groaned. The thing that he had spent so long fighting against - the idea that his father had shown to him back at Bespin, of overthrowing Palpatine together  and ruling the galaxy as father and son - had seemed to come true, in the most roundabout way.

"Your rebel friends are still firing upon us. I suggest you do something about that."

"Like what?" Another shot only just grazed their shields, knocking the shuttle off balance for a moment. "I can't exactly call them up and ask them nicely, you know!"

There was a feeling in what his father was projecting, clearly on purpose, out into the Force. He recognised it immediately, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to know what the reaction would be if he told either of them that Vader's exasperation in that moment was exactly the same as Leia's, when the answer was obvious but the boys just weren't seeing it.

A breath rattled out, and although he couldn't point, the helmet yet again did the work - Vader's head gesturing toward the comm unit.

"...Oh. Right."

...

_"Are you out of your Force-damned mind?!"_

Luke winced as the medics, both droid and organic, examined him. He'd been expecting this. And yet, at the same time... he hadn't' really thought it through this far. He'd known that he would  _try_ to bring his father back, but even though he'd known there had to be enough of Anakin Skywalker left in him to make a difference, he'd never really been sure if it would be  _enough_.

He'd never really seen Darth Vader descending on Endor being met with open arms. It was just their luck that it seemed to be the only viable option at the time - it was either that, or conduct potentially treasonous conversations on the  _Executor_ , since going to the Rebel medical frigate was a no-go.

His initial plan had been just as short-term as his father's. Land on the moon where they wouldn't be accidentally shot or captured or imprisoned, neither of them killing enemy troops or backup, and ask nicely if they could not be shot at, and have a medic, please. He'd been pretty sure they'd  _both_ needed a medic, so he'd specified that it had to be someone who didn't care who they were treating.

Except of course that the Alliance had heard Vader's breathing, and had tried to argue, which had lead to Vader very  _succinctly_ snap out that if they didn't send down a medic, then he would be sure not to count on the Alliance's care for their own in future.

Luke had  _tried_ to reassure everyone that he was fine. They had almost bought it, before his father had sternly said it to be false.

It had almost reminded him of what it had been like when Uncle Owen was still alive. 

Almost.

So now he was in a hastily built tent, with several others like it in the area nearby seeing to more conventional injuries, with the medics trying to ignore what they were hearing as Leia - a bacta patch on her blaster wound already - was describing in detail everything that had, could, and  _would_ go wrong.

"It would've been fine," she continued, pacing. "There would've been some resistance, but we could have  _done it_. With the Emperor dead and the second Death Star destroyed, everything else would have fallen into place. Vader taking up the role of head of state - even if it's just a field promotion of his own say so - it's going to give the Imperials a figurehead again. And that was the  _last thing we needed, Luke!_ _"_

She sighed, and finally sat back down. Although how much was down to the doctor starting to pointedly glare at her for jostling her own wounds and how much was the fact that she'd started to go back over points she'd already covered was up for debate.

In Luke's eyes, especially seeing his sister so exhausted as she was, elbows on knees and head in hands, rest was what they needed. Rest, and a time of recovery. A time when no one had to be fighting anyone else.

"It'll be okay," he tried to reassure her.

The Force thrummed hopefully between them, and despite the situation, he couldn't help but smile when she attempted, with an untrained ability that reminded him of his own several years ago, to try and figure out if he really meant what he was saying.

 _'Things are different now, you'll see. He's still Vader, but I think there's something more now. There has to be. He saved my life.'_ The medic wouldn't understand why Leia's head rose just then, incredulous, but that wasn't their job.  _'It's true! He's the reason the Emperor's dead.'_

For a moment, she felt the hope that flowed through him, touched briefly on his certainty. But then she was drawing away, shaking her head.

"It's too much," she said slowly. "I still don't trust it - I  _can't_ , I just- I can't. Not yet. You can't ask me that."

"We've got time, though," he said earnestly. "You don't need to do everything straight away."  _Like accept him as our father,_ were the unspoken words that hung between them, not even needing to be shared through the Force. It had taken so much for Luke himself to accept that - and he had suffered far less than Leia had. "As long as you give it a chance. I'm not saying we give ourselves over to the Empire, I never would! But if we don't try and work together through this, we'll  _never_ know how things might've gone."

Leia sighed, her shoulders shaking. It was hard to tell even through the Force if she was laughing or crying to herself, and perhaps it even was a bit of both. When she looked up again, her eyes were dry, but red.

"You really think this will work, don't you."

Luke shrugged.

"I've _got_ to. I can't let myself believe it _won't_. Just like I  _have_ to believe Vader's more than he was. Because if no one believes in things like that, then... they aren't going to believe in themselves. The Rebellion's the same. If no one believed they could go up against the Empire, we wouldn't even have got this far."

This time, the breath Leia let out carried a weight that had been pushing down on her, as well. Her eyes clearer, she stood.

"I guess I'll have to believe in  _you_  then, for this," she said as she opened the flap of the tent. 

 _Because you're the only thing about this whole crazy idea that I trust,_  was the impression Luke got.He couldn't really blame her. But it was good to have her on his side even so.

...

AN: I'll freely admit that I'm a fan of the idea that Palpatine tends to punish Vader in interesting ways for his failures, and that because of that it wouldn't make sense to have the life support armour go offline so soon, even if Palpatine's lightning is at full strength. Also, I've always thought that part of the reason Vader short circuits is because of the hand being chopped off, exposing wires. 

It might all be completely wrong, but if it is, I state artistic license and the fact that these are my headcanons. And my AU.

The last scene was originally going to be two different scenes. On the first take, we were actually going to see Luke calling the Alliance up to basically say 'please don't shoot bad things will happen', but I couldn't figure out some of the important details. So I went to the next best thing. Then, later, it would have ended with Vader basically barging in and making demands to see Luke and also to give directions to Piett (who had survived), but in the end that didn't work, given that they were in different places and Leia started to speak instead.

I think I am planning on writing more in this 'verse, and I've got my own ideas for what any future instalments might be. But if there's anything you specifically want to see, I'm open to ideas!


End file.
